U.S. struggles to get Israel, Palestinians to talks

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, listens to a reporter ask a question during a news conference with African Union Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, not seen, after their meeting at the Department of State in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012. / AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

WASHINGTON The Obama administration sought Friday to direct Israel and the Palestinians back toward direct peace talks, even as the two sides and much of the world seemed to be ignoring the U.S. attempts at leadership on a Mideast peace strategy.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met senior Israeli and Palestinian officials Friday, with each side locked in a pattern of actions that the United States had expressly warned against: the Palestinians winning U.N. recognition of their claim to a state on Thursday and the Israelis retaliating Friday by approving 3,000 new homes on Israeli-occupied territory.

The administration has campaigned for nearly two years to prevent the Palestinian action at the United Nations, fearful it would anger Israel so much that the resumption of direct talks between the Jewish state and Palestinians would be impossible. The administration remains concerned as well that statehood could mean International Criminal Court action against Israeli soldiers for their conduct in Palestinian or disputed territory — a scenario Washington believes would greatly debilitate peace hopes.

"We have to convince Palestinians that direct negotiations with Israel represent not just the best but the only path to the independent state they deserve," Clinton said Friday night in a speech at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington. "America supports the goal of a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security with Israel. But this week's vote at the U.N. won't bring Palestinians any closer, and it may bring new challenges for the United Nations system and for Israel."

Most of the world's governments brushed aside Israeli and American concerns, with U.N. member states voting 138-9 to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state and grant it the most significant upgrade in diplomatic status in its more than six-decades of conflict with Israel. The United States insists that the result has changed nothing on the ground, but it is struggling to shift the focus to where it believes progress on an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is possible.

Clinton said Israel, too, needed to reach out to moderate Palestinians and "help those committed to peace to deliver for their people in the here and now" at a time when the U.S. is hoping that a fragile cease-fire Egypt sealed last week between the Jewish state and Hamas will prove durable. On Israel's settlement announcement Friday, she said "these activities set back the cause of a negotiated peace."

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The Obama administration has almost nothing to show for four years of mediation efforts. Israeli-Palestinian talks have been mostly dormant since the failure of the last high-level U.S. engagement to produce an agreement, when President George W. Bush brought leaders to Annapolis, Md., with the goal of a treaty by the end of 2008. After a two-year hiatus, talks begun under the Obama administration's guidance in 2010 quickly fizzled out.

The rough contours of any agreement are clear. The two sides would have borders based on Israel's boundaries before the 1967 Mideast war, with agreed land swaps for Israeli security, to take into account population movements on the ground and ensure that Palestinian lands are connected. The two sides would also have to reach long-sought understandings on water supplies, Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem — which both Jews and Muslims consider to be their holy cities and which both sides claim as their capital.

But American efforts have been continuously stymied. The Palestinians won't enter direct talks until Israel halts the construction of new Jewish homes on lands they claim for their state; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government says there can be no preconditions on negotiations. And despite repeated pleas from Washington, both sides have pressed on with actions that have only made peace less likely and arguably strengthened the position of hardliners on both sides.

Hoping to steer the diplomacy back toward a path to peace talks, and away from the world spotlight of the U.N., Clinton met with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Washington on Friday. She also spoke to Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, a key mediator.

Clinton reiterated strong U.S. support for Israel, while also reassuring the Palestinians that Washington remains engaged in peace efforts. The Obama administration doesn't want to shut out the Western-backed government of President Mahmoud Abbas despite its disagreements, especially after Hamas gained wider legitimacy in the Arab world after its recent weeklong war with the Jewish state.

Unlike Hamas, Abbas' government publicly supports a two-state agreement with Israel. Hamas and other groups in the Gaza Strip have fired thousands of rockets at Israel in recent years.

"A lasting ceasefire is essential for the people of Israel, whose communities lie in the path of these rockets," Clinton said. But she added that Gazans deserve better, too. "Just as Israel cannot accept the threat of rockets, none of us can be satisfied with a situation that condemns people on both sides to conflict every few years. Those who fire the rockets are responsible for the violence that follows, but all parties in the region have a role to play in keeping the peace."

Clinton called on Egypt, specifically, to prevent new weapons from being smuggled into Gaza. And she demanded that U.S. allies that have grown closer to Hamas, such as Turkey and Qatar, make clear to Gaza's rulers that confrontation is no one's interest.

[verifabletruthmatters]

Israel has had more than 60 years to prove itself. It's the same religious war the Rabbis started in 1850 to steal back Palestine ignorantly believing Palestine to be the Promised Land. They willingly reduce a Consciousness aligned with 100 BIL galaxies headed to Infinity, to a moron who cares about real estate in the Mideast, on a speck of dust called Earth. There are 1400 planets in the "habitable zone" of their star like our Sun, and 33 of them are the same size as Earth. In other words, there's nothing special about Earth, except that the human species is doing a great job failing the real Program. "Take basic Understandings, Kindergarten material like the TEN COMMANDMENTS, and raise them to the level of the Universal LAWS that govern God's World", to reach an Awareness Level known as THE PROMISED LAND". The message for centuries has been to stop violating the LAWS, because Physics doesn't tolerate being violated. It's the cause of every accident and virtually every tragedy on the planet. EVERYTHING has to be translated to a function of Energy governed by Physics. Teachers who know what they're doing don't leave behind TEACHINGS that are a violation of the Universal LAWS that govern God's World. Fundamentalists are HUGE VIOLATORS of verifiable TRUTH, therefore HUGE VIOLATORS of the associated Universal LAWS that govern the Universe, therefore HUGE VIOLATORS of God's World.

Which is exactly where we find 6 million genocidal Jews in a nation of hypocrites called Israel, pushing a pack of bogus and violating religious ignorance, easily disproved. They ignorantly believe they can force the SECOND COMING by stealing back a piece of real estate, when they've spent centuries butchering the TEN COMMANDMENTS. They ignorantly believe they are "A CHOSEN PEOPLE" when Physics is running the show & it doesn't play favorites. A Consciousness aligned with 100 BILLION galaxies going to Infinity isn't going to violate the Physics running the show. The Consciousness that was Jesus, left the area around Jerusalem and spent 17 years studying under THE MASTERS in Tibet, where he left behind TEACHINGS on Reincarnation that have been stripped from the 100 versions of a very adulterated, highly politicized book, called the Bible. The current texts read nothing like the original documents, which in the case of the New Testament are 300 years old. Until humans are willing to translate the most original documents of any Sacred Text to a function of Energy governed by Physics, they're not going to have a clue what the TEACHER was trying to say. Jesus spent the last 300 years traveling among the Indians of North and South America leaving behind the same TEACHINGS as he did in the Mideast. If... there was going to be such a thing as "A CHOSEN PEOPLE" the title would go to the Indians, then to the people of Tibet, NOT the Jewish People.

Pro-Israeli, Jewish, Judge Goldstone chose 3 dozen war crimes out of 3600 atrocities committed by Israel in Jan 2009, which were released in the Goldstone Report, because he has a long history of investigating war crimes in Rwanda, Cosovo, Africa, etc.(Bill Moyers Journal 10-23-09) We have Separation of Church & State in the US because religions have a long history of destroying, causing most wars, and being incessant about pushing their violating ignorance. Which is all that Israel is--scheming, manipulating, lies, deceit, betrayal, theft and genocide--wasting BILLIONS in US taxpayer money. 17 million people were harmed by "white-supremacist, racists" in Nazi Germany. It was an atrocity for 17 million people, not just 6 million Jews. The Jews were already engaged in their "religious Supremacy ignorance" in 1850, decades before Germany ever happened and Germany knew what England and the Zionists were up to. Israel is backed by 50 million Evangelical Fundamentalists in the US pushing a completely different pack of violating, religious ignorance around the SECOND COMING, The End of Days, their highly violating interpretations of the Book of Revelations, and being taken into heaven in THE RAPTURE. That's why Israel gets away with murder, theft, scheming, manipulation, and incessant lies to push violating ignorance and obnoxious abuse. There could be peace in the Mideast. The US & England are responsible for creating the atrocity and abomination that is Israel. Cut off all aid, force them to the table for one discussion: how to move them out. Give them the ability to immigrate to US and England. (The Israeli Lobby by John Mearsheimer, "The Mideast: A Century of Conflict" by NPR, Morning Edition, Sept 2007 a 7 part series w 13 good references, The Palestinians by Jonathan Dimbleby, The Accidental Empire by Gorshum Goremberg, Pity The Nation: Israeli Atrocities in Lebanon, Against The Tide by Lincoln Chaffee, Bill Moyers Journal 11-30-07 w John Hagee head of Christians United For Israel (CUFI), NPR, Fresh Air, 11-24-09 &12-6-09; 11-29-11; 8-24 & 10-3-2011 on New Apostolic Reformation)

[FormerUSMCSergeant]

Of course Israel refuses to sit down and negotiate. To do so, they'd have to stop building illegal settlements.
Israel has no interest in peace. What it's interested in is the slow eradication of the Palestinians and annexation of their land.

[FormerUSMCSergeant]

Cut aid to both sides until they agree to sit down in earnest.

[gracescalia]

Israel *HAS NEVER* taken "marching orders" from ANYBODY--including the U.S., their STRONGEST ally, when it comes to defense. EVER.

BUT, I can tell you who'll FLINCH first and screw up between Palestine and Israel: it'll be some palestinian KOOK who screws up the ceasefire and fires *just one* rocket. Then, Israel, with its military superiority, will POUNCE and grab the land.

Its just that simple.

[gracescalia]

Israel *HAS NEVER* taken "marching orders" from ANYBODY--including the U.S., their STRONGEST ally, when it comes to defense. EVER.

BUT, I can tell you who'll FLINCH first and screw up between Palestine and Israel: it'll be some palestinian KOOK who screws up the ceasefire and fires *just one* rocket. Then, Israel, with its military superiority, will POUNCE and grab the land.

Its just that simple.

[destruk3]

Well if the USA can invade Israel and set up martial law to prevent new construction on illegal settlements, then the Palestinians and Israelis will come to an agreement. We've invaded plenty of other countries so this would be no different.

[punx3030]

Well all that Israel has to do now is build the 3rd temple in jerusalem ushering in the apocalypse.